touch the stars for time will not flee
by imperfectandchaotic
Summary: At first, he's just a dark shadow against the bright light of the moon. But as Rapunzel looks closer, leaning further over the windows' edge, she realizes that those graceful, looping arcs are not the work of a moonlit bird as she'd previously thought. It's a boy. [eventual Rise of the Brave Tangled Dragons crossover fic]


**touch the stars for time will not flee**

**Notes 'n things: **so this is the best thing to happen to animated movies since forever, and this fic is based on a couple of youtube videos that I will have link to in my profile - because you know, context and whatnot.

An eventual four part crossover with you can guess who, so when those parts go up I will probably post in the appropriate crossover first and then back here depending on where the story goes?

**featured pairings/characters: **Jack/Rapunzel, Merida/Hiccup, Toothless, the Guardians (eventually, maybe)

* * *

The first time she sees Jack, her mother's been gone for so long that Rapunzel actually thinks she's imagining him. At first, he's just a dark shadow against the bright light of the moon. But as Rapunzel looks closer, leaning further over the windows' edge, she realizes that those graceful, looping arcs are not the work of a moonlit bird as she'd previously thought.

It's a boy.

Her mind aches from trying to understand - how is it that he can _fly? _Rapunzel has never before yearned so deeply to be free of the tower's confines; she has too many questions that this simple space cannot answer, like _how does midnight air feel on your face from so close to the moon?_ But before she can duck back into the safety of her home's shadows, the boy stops his dancing and notices her.

He freezes, a long curled stick in hand, so abruptly that Rapunzel thinks he's going to fall out of the sky. She stares up at his frame washed in light and is stunned at the feeling of loneliness the image offers her. So Rapunzel does the first thing she can think of: she waves.

Seventeen years old and her first encounter with another person, what does she do? She _waves. _But there's no time to mentally berate herself, because Rapunzel is too busy leaping backwards when the boy rockets towards her with a single breathless question falling from his pale lips:

"_You can __**see**__ me?"_

She just nods frantically, heart too full in her throat to speak. The boy, who can she clearly now, throws back his head of snow white hair and lets out a sound, judging by his expression, of indescribable joy.

"I-I can't, I can't believe it, you can see me!"

HIs eyes are so blue that it takes her breath away.

And then he's backflipping off the window ledge with another shout; the sound echoes throughout the valley and back up into the sky. Rapunzel lurches forward to see where he's gone, only to jerk her hands back from the window ledge.

A thin layer of ice has appeared where the boy had been anchored just moments before, spread and curled around the wood in a beautiful pattern she hasn't seen in years.

_Frost. _

He's rising up the length of the tower, his long stick angled against one shoulder and a rueful smile on his face. He comes to a stop on her ledge, leaning there and forcing her to back further into the landing.

"Sorry about that," he says, running long fingers through his hair. "It's just…well, I haven't spoken to another human being in about three hundred years."

Rapunzel feels her mouth fall open, as the boy looks up at her through dark lashes. "I'm Jack," he continues, smiling wider. "Jack Frost."

She swallows . "Rapunzel."

Jack looks positively gleeful at this simple human interaction—Rapunzel considers the weight of what he's just told her (three _hundred _years) and feels vaguely crippled by it.

"You're…magic?"

She watches his whole expression change; gone is the wide-eyed look of a boy and instead there is the shadowed gaze of someone older than Rapunzel can even comprehend. He's smirking just slightly, a lazy curl of one side of his mouth, but even now at first glance she can see something fragile and closed down deeper.

There is something vaguely frightening about that depth.

"What gave you that impression?" he drawls, leaning even longer still against the length of his stick. Rapunzel, thankfully, has regained enough of herself to roll her eyes.

"Experience?" she offers. Jack raises one silvered brow but she doesn't elaborate, remembering very suddenly where she is and who will be breaking through the deceiving vines when dawn tickles the sky.

"So," Rapunzel recovers, pushing down a sudden blush creeping up her neck, "How come I've never seen you before?"

He tilts his head, apparently considering the question. "When was the last time you had a real winter here?"

It's her turn to stop and think, and the answer is surprising. "I was…four? I got the flu."

Jack makes a face, mouth twisted in displeasure, and it dawns on her.

_"You—"_

His hand goes to the back of his neck and that rueful expression from before returns. "Sorry."

But before she can accost him, can ask _how does he make the snow, _the unmistakable sound of her mother's humming carries through the valley.

"Oh no…"

The abrupt panic must show on her face, because Jack's easy grin disappears. "What? Hey!"

"You have to go!" Rapunzel hisses, grabbing fistfuls of his blue sweater and trying to shove him off the ledge. Her hands come back frozen. "If she catches you—"

He seems too surprised to be indignant, looking down at the dark silhouette moving closer and closer to the base of the tower. "Alright, alright," Jack says, holding his hand up in a gesture of surrender. "Later, Princess."

He smirks, the expression somehow already familiar, and Rapunzel is too dumbfounded to correct him before he vanishes, leaving only filagrees of frost and cold air in his wake.

___—_like a shooting star, he shines_—_

Jack tells himself he shouldn't keep going back. He has winters to keep, after all. He has snow days to deliver and fun to have, and yet the wind keeps pulling him to that tower unseen from the forest floor and the girl forever inside.

The first time he sees her hair in all its splendour, it leaves him genuinely speechless.

"But…_why?"_

Rapunzel runs her fingers through the strands closest to her face, as though it were a shield. It's her nervous gesture_—_it takes many weeks of meetings, but eventually Jack will come to recognize the action.

"It-it's a long story."

For a moment they just look at each other. Then Jack laughs, the sound bursting out so fully as it hasn't in who knows how long, since before the ages of the years had started to wear on his mind.

Rapunzel laughs too, and then they are both doubled over and clutching their stomachs and a happiness glows warm in the centre of Jack's chest. Pascal looks on from his perch on the table, his gaze veiled with chameleon disapproval.

He'd tried to get Jack with his tongue when they'd first met_—_Pascal had ended up frozen and dangling from Jack's ear and only Rapunzel's frantic hands pushing his head closer to the fire kept him from laughing about it.

She has warm hands.

Her yearning for the world outside the tower sometimes takes his breath away. Sometimes, when they're lucky and her mother disappears for several hours at a stretch, Jack can just balance on his staff between beams and watch her paint her desire all over the walls.

It feels private, but he can't tear his eyes away from the fluid motions of her hands, and the way her nose wrinkles whenever she concentrates.

"Jack?"

"Hmm?"

He pulls his eyes from the little splotch of pain by her ear and meets Rapunzel's gaze. He's sure that if he could still blush, this feeling would scream on his face. Her head is tilted just so now; Jack loses track of the streak of yellow.

"What do you think?"

For weeks he's been regaling her with tales of his experience of the world; she was particularly taken with the idea of the Sandman and his magical golden dust, but even this knowledge doesn't prepare him for the sight laid out before his eyes on the curved walls of her room.

It is rows upon rows of small houses in the dark of night, a castle in the distance, and in the dark there flies dream upon golden dream_—_horses pulling carriages and young boys playing soldier, golden tendrils stretch from a swirling cloud whose edge is lost against the beam_—_and then, beyond a long patch of forest green, Rapunzel's tower, and dozens upon dozens of floating, bright lights rising in the sky.

Jack hovers trailing fingers over them, mindful of the paint.

"What are these?" he asks, and when he turns to look at her, he's surprised to find Rapunzel avoiding his gaze. Jack looks again at the floating lights and back at Rapunzel, who is now running her fingers through her hair.

He steps closer, crouching down and ducking his head to catch her eyes.

"Hey."

She looks up finally; the openness of her expression makes him swallow. "You can tell me," he coaxes. "It can't be worse than losing a bet with Bunny."

At last, she lets out a stream of air, staring past him at the drying wall.

"It's my dream," she says simply, and the heaviest silence that has ever passed between them settles in the high rafters.

"Every year, on my birthday, these floating lights appear in the sky. Thousands of them, Jack, and I just_—_I just have to _know._"

Rapunzel's gaze is bright and imploring. Jack has honestly no idea what to do in face of such barren desire. He knows why she's never gone, has heard endless lecture of danger and terror from secret perches around the tower; Mother Gothel cannot see him_—does not believe—_is the sardonic thought, and he has never before been grateful for it.

"We should go," he says then, the words just _spilling out _as though he'd just dropped them by accident. Rapunzel's reaction is that of such surprise that Jack is half-afraid she's going to fall from her self-made swing.

"What?"

"The lights," Jack continues, struggling to form proper sentences in the face of the fragile hope in her eyes. "We should go see the lights. I think_—_I think I know where to find them."

* * *

**More Notes: **Okay! So since we're on a proper fic hosting site and not on Tumblr, I will have the second part to these two up hopefully soon, and then the opposing Merida/Hiccup story in the appropriate crossover section, and then they'll crossover again with each other? I don't know crossovers are complicated.

But let me know what you think because no one reads anything on Tumblr and I would love feedback!

Oh FFnet it has been too long.

Annie


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